5 Social Media Insights We've Learned Over the Month

We’re back at it! Celebrate good times because One Twelfth’s edition of social media insights we’ve learned has made its triumphant return!

We’ve got five new insights to elevate your brand. How do we know they’ll elevate your brand? Because they already helped elevate the brands we’ve been working with!

Take a look for yourself:

1. Stick to the Script

According to Biglikeco.com, a site that specializes in researching trends in marketing on Facebook, there are three main reasons why a page is liked.

The number one reason is obvious: People want things for free. “40% of Facebook users say they like a page to receive discounts and coupons from a company”, according to the site, which should come as no surprise to anyone.

It’s the number two reason, following closely at 39%, that should be the focal point of your content.

“Studies show that 39% of customers Like businesses on Facebook to publicly display their approval of it to their friends. According to “Power of a Like,” those connected to you are some of your best customers, meaning they are heavy users of your service or product. Your Facebook fans are the ones vouching for you — much like a personal recommendation.”

Plain and simple: People like your page because they like your brand. Congratulations! People like what you do! When producing your content, keep in mind that a vast, and significant, all-too-important, majority wants to see content focused on the product or service you offer.

For example, we run the Motorola Solutions account across Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and have observed the most well-received posts are always those with the product in a standalone image. Take a look at the performance of these posts featuring nothing more than short copy describing the product and then the product itself:

Outside of the posts we’ll discuss in a moment (That also correspond and relate to the point we’re making here), these were our best performers from the month, and they all share a common theme; they all have short, sometimes witty, copy and are accompanied with an image of a two-way radio.

2. Have some fun

Not every post needs to be a promotion of a specific product or a call-to-action advertisement. Use certain days, such as the end of the week when engagement is at its highest, to engage with your audience.

For Motorola Solutions, we liked to use Thursday to promote our history by utilizing the always popular #TBT hashtag. The result of these efforts were some of our best over the course of the past three months:

These posts serve not only as brand identity for our fanbase, but as nostalgia, which is significant for an audience with a majority that’s over the age of 35. This appeals to our fanbase in more ways than one, and it’s reflected in the significant amount of shares and likes we received from these two posts.

On Friday, we do something similar to the nostalgia effect, but we instead ask our fanbase to provide the nostalgia, rather than providing it ourselves, in the form of engagement posts.

Here’s an example, which was our most engaging post to date:

Notice how simple it is. There isn’t much to it. The copy is simple and the image, once again, evokes that feeling of nostalgia as it depicts a Motorola billboard from the past. Without any money invested, we were able to reach over 3,000 people and receive 29 comments.

The question isn’t too demanding, either, and only requires a one-word response. However, we received those answers in an eclectic array, with some commenters also taking pictures of their radio and even telling us stories of their radio! All from a single, simple question.

These engaging questions are a great way of interacting with your audience, as well as having them interact with each other, thus creating an active community of users all interested in your brand.

3. Moderate, Moderate, Moderate!

Besides promoting your service or product on the digital medium for free, unless you’re boosting posts and advertising which is highly advised to make your brand identity successful, interacting with your audience should be one of, if not the number one reason why you’re on social media.

Before social media, brand users could only interact with their favorite brands through tangled wires of call centers and fill-out forms on their website that either went unanswered or was simply unreliable.

Social media’s ultimate purpose is to serve as a meeting ground. For some people, it’s a meeting ground of distant relatives or friends, or a meeting ground of a certain TV show or team’s fanbase. For others, it’s a meeting ground between brand users and the brand itself.

In just one week, and on a single promoted post, we received over 10 sales inquiries. All we had to do for those inquiries was to ask them to message us their e-mail addresses, which we would then pass along to our sales associates. These are all inquiries and sales we would have never received had we not interacted with our fanbase and their desires.

Answer any comment, concern, complaint, or compliment that comes your way. It’s a great way of showing your fanbase that you genuinely care in your willingness to help resolve or address their issue, whatever it may be.

Plus, it’s an even better way of generating sales you never would have received without interacting with your audience.

4. Partner and Interact with other Brands

An easy way of spreading your brand’s name and influence is to partner on social media is to partner with relatable brands and taking part in relatable events.

For example, since Motorola Solutions plays a large role in equipping law enforcement with their primary form of communication, we are constantly promoting our involvement with agencies, such as our involvement with the St. Louis PD:

The marketing team at Motorola Solutions has also taken it upon themselves to conduct tours and demonstrations of products, and to sponsor events, such as the Chicago Red Cross Breakfast, which honored law enforcement and firefighters in the area.

This serves not only as a way to get your brand’s name out there, as it will also be mentioned on the social media pages of the brand or event you tag, but also as a way to show your involvement in the community.

As is the case in many aspects of life, networking and interacting is key.

5. Give the People what they Want

If you make enough posts about the products you sell, you’ll eventually begin to notice trends in what people prefer. These trends are what’s going to drive your brand from a middling page that seldom receives attention to a can’t-miss page that you have to visit everyday.

If your audience is liking, commenting, sharing, or retweeting a certain product more than others, use it to your advantage; create more posts focused on that product, make an offer revolving around that product, or even stage a giveaway to really bring everyone from all corners of the internet in.

It’s a matter of giving your audience what they want. It’s perfectly fine to test out promoting other products, but don’t do it at the cost of depriving the majority of your fanbase of posts that they’re genuinely interested in.

For example, Motorola Solutions has a great deal of verticals they sell radios in. These verticals include law enforcement, fire/emt, national government security utilities, education, oil & gas, transportation & logistics, and manufacturing. Although we’ve only had less than three months of content available, we were able to distinguish the law enforcement, fire/emt, and NGS were the most popular.

What do they all have in common? They’re all related to public safety. Now that we know that, we can create more public safety posts, reduce the frequency of posts for the other verticals, and appeal to the majority of our fanbase.